What is the Bazaarvoice Authentic Reviews Trust Mark?
The Bazaarvoice Authentic Reviews Trust Mark is a symbol of a company’s dedication to authentic consumer feedback regarding its products and services.
The Trust Mark is also a signal to consumers that the review content they see is safeguarded – by a neutral 3rd party – with sophisticated fraud detection technology and industry-leading best practices.
What does this mean to me?
We know the trust consumers place in ratings and reviews is tied directly to authenticity. That’s why, at Bazaarvoice, we’ve made it our mission to safeguard the authenticity of the reviews people depend on to make informed purchase decisions. We believe that reviews should represent the genuine, unbiased, and transparent opinion about the author’s experience with a product or service.
What is the Bazaarvoice Authenticity Policy?
Our Authenticity Policy is about making sure consumers are confident they can trust the authenticity of the reviews they encounter every day across the web on sites that carry the Authentic Reviews Trust Mark.
The policy has been used as the model for WOMMA’s authenticity guidelines in its Code of Ethics. Bazaarvoice is also a lead participant with AFNOR in Europe, helping to create governing rules for user-generated content, including a certification process.
We back our Authenticity Policy with:
- Industry-leading fraud detection technology that allows us to identify the submission source of all reviews;
- Sophisticated algorithms, alerting and filtering capabilities that allow our moderation teams to identify, flag and report suspicious content; and
- A dedicated team of analysts that monitors suspicious reviews to determine their authenticity.
The Bazaarvoice Authenticity Policy has three main criteria that must be met for authentic review content displayed on the websites of Bazaarvoice clients:
Free from fraud and spam
Commercially reasonable efforts are taken to help prevent the submission of fraudulent content from any submission source. This could include disruptive or ‘trolling’ behavior, commercial messages, automated submissions (e.g. bots and scripts), illegitimate or degrading content from a client’s competitor, and self-promotion.
Free from edits, classification, and alteration
Reviews are not altered in any way by anyone other than the original author — including corrections for spelling or grammar. Reviews are not filtered, edited, or deleted simply because they are negative or are lower rated.
Transparent
We do not allow companies to directly ask for positive reviews. If consumers are offered money or promotional material (such as discounts or coupons) in exchange for providing an unbiased review, then the review must note this fact.
Further, employees and vendors of the organization may not submit content without disclosing their relationship to the product or service.
Please click here for more details about the Bazaarvoice Authenticity Policy »